News Corp outlets have alleged ($) deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce is expecting a child with a former staffer. The former media adviser and Daily Telegraph journalist is reportedly due to give birth in April. The Daily Telegraph’s front page story, “Bundle of Joyce”, included full-page photos of the staffer, and noted that Joyce has refused to comment. Joyce admitted he was separated from his wife, Natalie, during a speech to parliament in December, saying during a debate on same-sex marriage that he “didn’t come to this debate pretending to be a saint”. In October The Daily Telegraph reported ($) on “the physical and mental toll” Joyce was suffering as a result of “vicious innuendo about [his] personal life” being circulated by political opponents.

The federal Labor opposition is developing a jobs package for regional Queensland as it reportedly prepares to announce its opposition to the Carmichael coal mine. Debate within Labor continued this week about whether to retain its public ambivalence towards the mine, with the impending Batman by-election empowering those in the party who believe the mine should be stopped. The party is also set to join The Greens in opposing a government plan to overhaul the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, allowing irrigators in Queensland and northern New South Wales to draw 70 billion additional litres from the river system without incurring financial penalties. In November the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists warned the plan is “in danger of failing”, with one author labelling many of the plan’s environmental outcomes “appalling”.

The Productivity Commission has warned that customers of Australia’s major banks are “ripe for exploitation”, and that government efforts to increase costs on the “big four” are likely to be passed on to consumers. In a 600-page draft report on competition in the financial system, released today, commissioners Julie Abramson, Stephen King and Peter Harris noted that the banks’ “substantial market power” let them “pass on cost increases and set prices that maintain high levels of profitability without losing market share”. The report, commissioned by treasurer Scott Morrison in July 2017, highlighted that consumers “would ultimately pay more” with the introduction of the Turnbull government’s $6.2 billion bank levy.

The Australian sharemarket lost $60 billion in value yesterday, following similar drops in the United States and Asia. Technology, healthcare and energy shares performed the worst, losing up to 5.1 per cent of their value on average, while the major banks all lost roughly 3 per cent. The downturn was triggered by a day of massive losses on the Dow Jones, which had its single largest day of losses in history on Monday. Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe, meanwhile, signalled that interest rates would remain at their historic low of 1.5 per cent for the foreseeable future, noting that “inflation is likely to remain low for some time”

And far-right senators Cory Bernardi, David Leyonhjelm and Fraser Anning have formed a voting bloc in an attempt to exert influence on government legislation and put themselves “on an even standing” with One Nation and the Nick Xenophon Team in the Senate. Speaking on Tuesday, Leyonhjelm said the alliance came about because “the government has decided we’re irrelevant” and the trio were “sick of being called by the government last” to negotiate legislative deals. Now they can be irrelevant slightly faster than usual.

“There are many loose ends in high-tech life. Like unbreachable blister packs or awkward sticky tape, paper jams suggest that imperfection will persist, despite our best efforts. They’re also a quintessential modern problem – a trivial consequence of an otherwise efficient technology that’s been made monumentally annoying by the scale on which that technology has been adopted. Every year, printers get faster, smarter, and cheaper. All the same, jams endure.” the new
yorker

“A delicate relationship seems likely to exist at Eton in the coming years, between deserving boys of modest background who enter the school on bursaries, often in the face of incredulity or even opposition at home, and the poised, prepared, nutritionally optimised children of the new upper class whose parents are expected to finance all this largesse – not simply by paying fees, but also by responding to pretty much continuous appeals for money.” 1843

“Fulbright University Vietnam was meant to be a living monument to a new era, free from the stain of a brutal history. Instead, Kerrey’s appointment shone a spotlight on that history. The reckoning it spurred in Vietnam – catching American supporters of FUV by surprise – illuminates how the development of a historically improbable friendship has left unsettled some of the most painful issues of the past.” politico

“The market sell-off in the United States ricocheted across the world on Tuesday, as investors from Tokyo to Hong Kong and London to Frankfurt voted with their feet and futures markets indicated the American stock market could be in for another tough day ... Market analysts digesting the numbers from Asia said they did not expect the selling to let up anytime soon.” the new york times

“During the Dow’s recent rapid rise, a more responsible President than Donald Trump might have pointed out the dangers of the market overheating, or even kept silent. But that’s not Trump. As stocks soared, he gloated, and insinuated that his policies were responsible ... He lives in the moment and, even during his darkest days in the Oval Office, the stock market has given him something to crow about. For some reason, he didn’t mention it on Monday.” the new yorker

“Martin arrives trailing two horrors – his battered, vomit-green striped armchair and Eddie the dog, who spends most of the first season staring balefully at Frasier. That armchair is the single most meaningful object in the whole of ’90s comedy ... This is a metaphor for how family relationships are battered, worn and cosy rather than beautifully best-china pristine. The chair is a test of your values – of substance over appearance.” new statesman

Mike Seccombe
After two High Court decisions, the fight against federal funding for religious-only school chaplains is set to end with a test case on state anti-discrimination law.You can’t pay someone to break the law, which is what the Victorian government is now doing. And they can’t say, ‘Well, the federal government is paying us to break the law.’

Kate Iselin
The Victorian Liberal Party’s state council has, ahead of this year’s election, endorsed the ‘Nordic model’ to transform sex work laws, but European experiences suggest it can have devastating consequences for workers.

Rebecca Harkins-Cross
She’s a writer whose plays have been widely lauded by critics but largely neglected by the mainstream. Now Patricia Cornelius’s work will take its place on the main stage. “It sounds so hifalutin, but my ambition was really just to be able to create great work … that I felt soared. It never entered my mind that it would happen in the mainstream.”

Annie Smithers
I came across this recipe some years ago and it has become my favourite to move on to once I’m over the ‘sweet’ quince thing. It features Persian overtones, Moroccan influences and rich flavours that are perfect as the nights get colder.

Guy Rundle
The massive expansion of the tertiary sector during the Dawkins era, and the elision of tech institutes and universities, set us off on the wild ride we are still on. Resistance by the humanities was greeted with exemplary punishment – the cheapest courses to teach, they were crowded with tens of thousands of new students and deprived of the funding to cater for them. The problem is worse in Australia than almost anywhere else. Had we a real respect for universities and what they do, the successive depredation of them would have given us a May ’68 redux by now. Instead, the machine hums on.

Paul Bongiorno
The fact is Labor senator Katy Gallagher referred herself to the High Court as a test case for “reasonable steps”. Turnbull’s attack on Shorten for gaming the system is very rich given he argued that Barnaby Joyce was eligible until the court declared otherwise. Joyce remained deputy prime minister and sat in the parliament for 74 days even though he was under a cloud. There is no real substance to the demands that the members now facing the voters again should apologise for the inconvenience and expense the byelections will cost. In all their cases, their good faith is established by their genuine efforts to comply with section 44, according to serious legal advice, which was clearly not the case with the politicians who were bundled out of the parliament last year.

Richard Ackland
This week Gadfly thinks it’s high time to unload some festering snipes and snarls. Take the Australian Press Council as a starting point. The press “regulator” is in the process of rissoling the Indigenous woman Carla McGrath as a public member of the council, on the feeble excuse that her position as deputy chair of GetUp! creates a conflict of interest. What on earth are they on about? The Press Council itself is a conflict of interest, riddled with tired hacks representing their paymasters in the media.

Even the farmers admit it is an increment – the decision by Malcolm Turnbull’s government not to ban live exports over summer, despite evidence of the risk to animals, despite footage of mass deaths and calls from vets to end the trade.The truth is, this is an industry of undue political clout. There are economic arguments against live exports, good ones. There are obvious welfare arguments, too.

Martin McKenzie-Murray
Though the unusual manner in which Aaron Cockman spoke of the alleged murderer of his children and ex-wife – his former father-in-law – was puzzling to many, psychological studies of similar crimes suggest a way to make sense of its seeming contradictions.